ABOUT NADIA ODLUM
Nadia Odlum is a Sydney-based artist whose practice explores the material language and lived experience of urban space. Their abstract works transform everyday city elements to investigate how bodies and environments interact, focusing on both individual and collective responses to space. An insatiable curiosity for different mediums drives their diverse practice, which spans paintings, drawings, sculptures, artists' books, and public artworks, alongside socially engaged projects, workshops and performance collaborations.
Odlum's work invites viewers to engage playfully with the nuances of city life, encouraging deeper reflection on our relationships with the material and social textures of our surroundings. Rather than presenting cities as static structures, their work reveals urban spaces as dynamic, living assemblages that are constantly shaped by processes of interaction.
As both artist and researcher, Odlum examines the complex entanglements between art, public participation, and urban development. Drawing upon knowledge from various disciplines, they seek to create work that exists in a space between fields, using contemporary art practice to generate fresh insights into how we collectively experience and reshape our urban environments. Their practice is driven by a belief in art's potential to spark critical thinking and foster meaningful change in how we understand and interact with our cities.
Nadia Odlum has exhibited in galleries and public spaces across Australia and internationally. This includes presentations at the Art Gallery of NSW, Carriageworks, Artspace, Station Gallery, Firstdraft Gallery, Murray Art Museum Albury, Home of the Arts (HOTA) and MANA Contemporary USA, as well as public art commissions for Urban Art Projects and the City of Parramatta Council and pedagogical projects for Kaldor Public Art Projects, The Powerhouse Museum, and the Biennale of Sydney.
Odlum's education includes a Bachelor of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) at the National Art School in 2012 and a Master of Fine Arts by Research at UNSW Art & Design in 2016, receiving the Australian Postgraduate Award. They were finalist in the 2023 NSW Visual Arts Fellowship, and have received numerous grants and prizes including the Helen Lempriere Scholarship, The Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Scholarship SCA Student Travel grant, the Dyason Bequest, and funding from Creative Australia. Residencies include the Cite Internationale des Arts (Paris), The Wassaic Project (New York), Vermont Studio Center (Vermont), Kala Art Institute (Berkeley), Palazzo Monti (Brescia, Italy), Megalo Print Studio (Canberra) and numerous residencies with Parramatta Artists’ Studios (Sydney).
At present, Nadia Odlum is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. Their research focuses on intersections of contemporary art and play, and the potential for public art to create opportunities for intergenerational play in urban space. They are a recipient of the Australian Government RTP scholarship, and have received the SCA Student Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Scholarship and the Arthur Macquarie Scholarship to further fund their research. They are part of the Australian Research Council funded project ART/PLAY/RISK: An interdisciplinary approach to building child friendly cities, led by Dr Sanné Mestrom.
For more information, feel free to get in touch.
Photo by Jacquie Manning, courtesy of Parramatta Artist's Studios